As the use of the Internet becomes more pervasive, business entities and individuals (“entities”) are increasingly using the Internet as a tool for obtaining information. For example, an entity might check numerous World Wide Web sites and/or databases (“sites”) for documents of interest to that entity. Typically, the entity will use a search engine to check these sites. In recent years, sophistication of search engines has improved, increasing the search engines' ability to produce search results that closely reflect the interests of the entity. The entity, now presented with a larger volume of relevant documents, cannot ignore the first, second, third or nth document returned by a search engine, and must instead consider nearly all of the documents in order to comprehensively understand the context related to the entity's interests.
Recent industry research by OutSell, Inc., demonstrates that entities are spending far more time than ever gathering data. At least a portion of this time could be more-effectively spent on analysis of the gathered data, which would ultimately lead to the discovery of critical information important to the entity.
Additionally, investment by the entity in more sophisticated search technology may actually lead to even less time for analysis. According to the Delphi Group, businesses are using anywhere from four to eight different search engines. Whether amassed from the public Internet, the corporate intranet, or information sources such as Lexis Nexis, the result is information overload.
Results of current search solutions are putting more pressure on an entity, causing the entity struggle with making sense of a gluttonous amount of relevant information. Ultimately, it is the entity that must relate relevant information from a large volume of documents in a timely, insightful and comprehensive manner. Additionally, the information available for a given interest of an entity changes over time. Consequently, an entity may be tasked with tracking, over a period of time, any additions and/or deviations pertaining to the interests of that entity. In such instances, the expanded volume of the search results places more burden on the entity.
As available information increases by the second, the next generation of search solutions will need to implement companion technologies that work with existing search engines to provide new search and analysis capabilities to an entity. These new solutions must provide entities with a sophisticated and efficient method for defining what is important to them. In other words, the new search solutions must allow the entity to perform searches using the entity's “personal lens” as opposed to standard enterprise taxonomies and search results that attempt to support the needs of all entities as if the interests of the entities were homogeneous. In addition, the next generation of search solutions must provide entities with expanded control over critical analytics by allowing the entity to create customized charts, graphs, text and/or various other methods for displaying search results. In addition, the next generation of search solutions must support collaborative efforts between entities.